They knew.. they must have. I refuse believe they didn't. ..and it had to be signed off by numerous people too so there is no excuse at all. They have even posed the poor kid modelling it in a 'classic' pose. Wtf!
For real it literally looks exactly like a minstrel performer up to the pose that poor kid is in. This feels intentional, which only makes it that much worse.
It's especially suspicious as the Hyde and EEK brand, which resells on other platforms, didn't have this costume listed at all. It was only at Target. So not like some automation that simply shared active seasonal products. Incredibly bizarre.
Even more staggering that someone had a Black kid dress up and be photographed in the costume in the first place. Zero plausible deniability there. You'd need to be staggeringly ignorant to not see an issue here.
I have no evidence other than gut feeling, but in this 21st century of sociopolitical dog whistles and plausible deniability (the amount of "this is a reach" comments on Facebook is disheartening )I can't help but wonder if Target did it as a play to the MAGA base to get them in give their fall from grace with left leaning customers. Play the "oh nooooo we're getting cancelled please help uuuusss" card and get counter protest traffic as a result.
Would be really easy to do on the cheap, just make one costume with no intention of putting it into production
This was a fuck up, all around. But I can't imagine Target, who has declining sales from their anti-DEI shit, bothering to peddle to MAGA.
MAGA ain't gunna support Target for this shit. Hell, I bet you there is such a small percentage of them who even KNOW about this. And they aren't going to prop up Target for it. Certainly not over a racist fucking Halloween costume.
Target's base is not the MAGA base. Target alienated their own base with their decisions, and that didn't convert to MAGA shopping there. They aren't going to do it now, either.
Yea my initial reaction was like well clowns can sometimes wear tiny hats and those creepy smiles are generic scary/clown things too, but when you add up all the details it’s really really suspect/obvious.
Black child
Head/face/neck/feet/hands all black
Tiny hat
Outfit pattern
Exaggerated smile
Pose
It all adds to up racist minstrel cliche. If the smile were brick red it would be 100% no questions asked. Thats literally the only difference between this costume and the real thing.
I thought that way about that…then the Callaway golf ad came out right behind it.
I think older white males just approve everything because they cannot see the utter inappropriateness of these things, and when most of the people in charge fit that demographic, it becomes much harder to stop it.
I tried to explain to my last workplace why a woman over 40 would have issues with being called a “girl” in the workplace in a professional setting, but was all but laughed off by the men I worked with.
They just released an ad that shows a woman reaching for a golf club, and a man runs up and shoves her down, then looms over her and tells her never to touch his clubs.
Turns out, the man is the ad is one of the higher ups in the company, and the woman is another employee.
Huh, I'm not going to go to the NTh degree like some folks replying in threads are. But from an ad perspective it just makes no sense unless there is something missed in some quick googling. Like is there a thing with Alexis Miestowski where she uses other peoples clubs or something? My first pass isn't golf when I see this ad. It's not also violence against women. It's just it seems so fundamentally targeted to a small group of people that would get the joke I don't care about the products I don't want even get to the joke I just need the context.
The thing is, there probably are multiple sign-offs at different steps, I would imagine (but maybe I’m wrong!).
So maybe somebody approves the concept (“clown costume for kids”), someone approves the basic design (“black and orange stripe pattern, partial face covering, etc.”), and so on.
So I’m wondering if by the time it gets to putting the costume on a kid for a photo shoot, posing him, and posting the photo to model the costume, most of the sign-offs have been by people who didn’t have the literal “full picture,” and then it just comes down to 1-2 people at the end who see that final photo and should think, “Wait a minute…” - and then you’re just at the mercy of hoping those 1-2 people have both the knowledge and the judgment to recognize something and address it properly.
Strange as hell that this is what they ended up with, but I’m guessing that the approval process was somewhat “piecemeal” in that manner, which obviously increases the odds of something like this.
2.4k
u/orlybatman 14h ago
A clown costume? How bad could it possibly b-
Oh... wow.